The present invention relates to thermostats. More specifically, the invention relates to remotely controlled thermostats that allow a user to increase or decrease the temperature of a closed environment from anywhere within or near the closed environment.
The typical home thermostat is mounted on a wall and connected by electrical circuitry to a heating/cooling unit. By making an adjustment to switches on the thermostat, the temperature setting to which the heating/cooling unit holds the temperature of the building may be changed.
The location of the thermostat is chosen at the time the home or building is constructed; moving the thermostat at a later date is expensive and somewhat difficult. Changing the temperature of a closed environment having a fixed thermostat requires going to the thermostat and moving its switches.
Moreover, there are times when an occupant desires to change the temperature of the home or building but going to the thermostat is either inconvenient, difficult or impossible. For example, if the temperature inside the home falls below a comfortable level at night because the preset temperature is set too low, an occupant might find it inconvenient to get out of bed, turn on a light and change the preset temperature at the thermostat.
If there is an invalid, especially an invalid who is elderly or in a wheel chair, adjusting the thermostat, usually positioned at eye level for a standing adult, may be difficult or impossible. The blind or vision-impaired have an especial problem adjusting thermostats.
For buildings where the thermostat is likely to be in an area of high traffic and where adjustments to the building temperature are the responsibility of a custodian, a locked cage or guard may be installed over the thermostat to prevent tampering. For the temperature of the building to be changed, the custodian must first unlock the guard before moving the thermostat switches.
These and other reasons have suggested the need for a remotely operated thermostat. There are portable thermostats in the prior art. Butkovich, at al. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,585,164 discloses a portable energy level control system that communicates with the heating cooling unit to adjust the temperature to desired levels in specific rooms in a home while other rooms are isolated by closing the heating ductwork. Cherry, et al. in U.S. Pat. No. 4,433,719 also discloses a portable remote environmental control system that adjusts temperature by sending signals to the heating/cooling unit every thirty seconds.
There is Keldmann's temperature regulating system for control of temperature in a room (U.S. Pat. No. 4,391,913) which has a refined temperature sensor in a room that adjusts the wall-mounted thermostat; Neal's thermostat is alterable by remote control (U.S. Pat. No. 4,336,902) using a second thermostat to override the first thermostat, a typical wall-mounted one; and the humidity control system and circuitry of Geisler, et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,186,873) relating to humidity control.
The prior art does not contain a device that responds to a simple desire on the part of an occupant to increase or decrease the temperature in a home or building from any location.
It is an object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus for the remote adjustment of the temperature of a closed environment such as a home or building. It is a further object of the invention to provide an easy-to-use, portable module for incrementally increasing or decreasing the temperature of a building at the command of the user. It is a further object of the invention to provide a method and apparatus for adjusting the temperature of a building that may be backfitted into homes having a conventional thermostats.
These and other objects of the invention will be obvious from a fair reading the following description of the present invention and the claims.